To fly, to drive, perchance to dream

A Grandma’s gotta do what she’s gotta do. It had been too long, since July, since I had seen the grandbabies.

Found a couple of weeks without too many obligations in them, cleared out what were there, then got online to see which airline had the best sale.

I mentioned my plans to Dave, knowing that he was not interested, and started my search for a palatable ticket.

(Funny, it’s only just now dawning on me that if they advertise a special rate from Atlanta to Washington/Dulles of, say, $39, I shouldn’t expect to find a return trip that is anything approaching that. Try closer to $180.)

You have to calculate what it’s worth to be grandparents.

But a month gone from those boys’ lives is a month gone. There are no reruns in real life. You can’t get it back. Not ever.

I threw caution to the wind, considered my options and poised my finger over the “submit” button, when Dave said, “We could drive, you
know.”

“We?” I said. “I didn’t know ‘we’ were even thinking of going.”

“Well, those pictures Jean sent make it look like the baby is really growing up, and we are missing a lot. He’s so cute.”

That was a first, Dave’s observation, based perhaps on the fact that he was at Jean’s birthing center when Baby-U was born. He held the minutes-old bundled boy in his arms, felt his strong “startle” instinct, heard the moist sounds of his first breaths.

I un-poised my finger in the nick of time.

“Were you thinking of driving?” I asked. He’s not so fond of long-distance driving as in our early years, because of attacks of sciatica and leg cramps from sitting in the confines of the Toyota truck our motor home rides on.

We did the math, and for two of us, even with high gas prices, we could drive the 1,400-mile trip to Leesburg for considerably less than we could fly.

It isn’t just the money. For Dave, parking the car at the airport is unacceptable, which means we have to beg rides from someone, coming and going, and the crowded lanes of I-85 are a lot to ask friends to deal with.

Then there are restrictions and regulations that really do change daily. It’s hard enough getting the house closed up without also having to find a copy of TSA rules and repack to please them.

It’s just not fun any more, flying. Used to be somewhat glamorous, and to be served a tasty meal at 35,000 feet was so cool. I guess I flew seldom enough that the fun and glamour were still there.

Of course, you get where you’re going so much faster, and that should be worth something. But the situation at Jean’s is not real encouraging to house guests, and requires considerable modification of her family’s sleeping arrangements if the guests number more than one.

Not to mention that Dave needs to find a quiet spot for his reading and his naps.

The motor home is looking better and better.

So are reports that gasoline prices are dropping daily. I think we got it for as low as $2.06 per gallon, and by keeping our speed down, we got about 15 miles to the gallon.

We drove to northern Virginia our usual way, northeast on I-85 to Charlotte, N.C., north on I-77, east again on I-81. We spent the night en route in a Wal-Mart parking lot not far from the Virginia state line, got to Jean’s about 4 the next afternoon. And the timing was perfect for lunch at Edelweiss, a very “echt” German restaurant at Exit 213 in Virginia.

But road surfaces are terrible and traffic was horrendous. I’d almost bet there were as many tractor-trailers as there were cars on the road.

Several times coming and going we were stopped dead waiting for a wreck to be cleared ahead.

The return trip was even worse. Dave decided to stay on I-81 further than usual, I-75 to Chattanooga, but traffic was so heavy we used U.S. 411 into Georgia instead.

On the plus side, however, despite the traffic, we left Jean’s when we were ready and not on the date and time printed on a boarding pass. We also brought Isaac, 13, home with us, having persuaded his mom we could keep up with school work here. So far, so good.

The camper is small and the only place we could offer the boy to sleep was on the narrow couch. We stayed in Warriors Path State Park in Kentucky and he seemed to sleep very well - except when awakened by a family of night-roaming raccoons who came to the screen-door, no doubt attracted by the crusts we tossed for the birds.

Between traffic and the jolting ride of our vehicular domicile the journey home was miserable. “I’ll never make this trip again,” Dave declared. It didn’t help much that I drove about half the time to the chorus of “Brake lights ahead! Brake lights ahead! Pay attention to what you’re doing! What were you looking at? Oh, I wish you’d let me drive!”

So here we are on the cusp of a more and more common dilemma. Children can’t afford to quit good jobs and move South. Grandparents don’t want to leave the South and move North. Neither flying nor driving is acceptable anymore.

And these babies are not waiting for any decisions. They’re just growing up, so fast, so fast, whether Grandpa’s there or not. Babies no more, so soon, so soon, with or without Grandma.